Everything You Need To Know About The Power Of Avocados

Is avocado a good or bad food for your health? Is it full of bad fat as many people claim? What are the best ways to consume it? Read on to find out!

The avocado craziness is out there! Everybody wants to eat avocados on toasts, tacos or salads. However, this green fruit has not always been popular both in North America or Europe. It’s actually pretty recently that the fruit appeared onto our plates!

So it’s a good time to break the show and check out this fruit in details!

First thing, avocado is not only a fruit or a vegetable, it’s both. Indeed, avocados are classified as fruiting vegetables, such as peppers, tomatoes or olives for example.

Avocado From A to Z

Avocado fruit, which comes from the avocado tree, has a unique pear-shaped form. The avocado tree originate from central America or south America. Aztecs were calling this fruit “ahuacalt”, that Spanish – who brought all the way to Europe from Mexico and Peru – transformed into “ahuacate” then “aguacate”, word that they still use today, to finish with the known “avocado”.

Nowadays, it’s mainly cultivated in Mexico, the US, Dominican Republic, Brazil and Colombia. Indeed, the avocado tree needs some sun! It’s growing in tropical and subtropical climates. The avocado tree can height of up to 20 meters and has dark green oval leaves. It exist about 10 different varieties of avocado trees that mainly produce small grapes of white or yellow flower, with a very strong smell. The flowering happens in 2 times and doesn’t give many fruits. That’s why avocados are an expensive fruits, it’s actually a pretty complicated process to grew some.

Find Your Perfect Avocado

Depending on the variety, avocado can have a different shape, color or weight – they can weight up to 1 kg! The most common one is the hass avocado, which has an oval shape with a shiny dark or purplish-brown coarse skin when it’s ripe. The hass avocado represents about 75% of the american production. Other types, such as Fuerte, Zutano and Bacon avocados, have a shiny green skin when they are ripe. If you’re lucky, you can also find a mini avocado variety, which is really cute!

Regardless of the variety type, all of the avocados will be onctuous inside with a butter-like consistency and the skin is never edible. Except for the mini avocado, all varieties will have a big pit in the middle, which can be easily removed.

Avocado Nutrition Facts

For 100g of raw avocado, you’ll have:

Water: 74,3%

Proteins: 2g

Fats: 15,3g

Carbs: 7,4g

Fibers: 2,1g

Total calories: 161g

Avocado contains naturally over 75% of monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats, which are considered as “good” fats as they have positive effects on your health. Note that it’s not the case of saturated fats and trans fats. If you’re “afraid” of fats, remember that it’s essential to the organism as all the cells in the body have some fat inside their membrane and hormones are made from fats. In addition, even if avocado has some fat, you won’t get any trouble to digest it. Indeed, it contains many enzymes that ease the digestion of these fats.

That’s not all, avocado is a very nutritive fruiting-vegetable, which:

Tips to Buy, Store, and Cook Avocados

When you buy some avocados, remember to always choose some that seem heavy compared to their sizes, are not too firm and don’t have any dark spot. If the avocado is too mushy, it’s too mature. Pick it if it’s soft when you press it a bit. Last advice: don’t choose your avocado depending on the skin color has it has nothing to do with what is inside but with the variety type.

Usually, you’ll need to store the avocado a bit before consuming it. Best is to keep it at room temperature as it won’t ripen if it’s in the fridge. Small tip is to store your avocados in a paper bag if you want them to ripen faster. Indeed, the ethylene gas which is released will be stuck inside the bag, which will speed up the processus. If you’re avocado is ripen but you don’t want to eat it straight away, don’t throw it but keep it in the fridge. You’ll be able to save it for 2 or 3 days maximum. Same advice if you have only use one half of the fruit, you can keep the other half in your fridge for 1 or 2 days. You’ll need to put some lemon juice onto the fruit in order to avoid the darkening.

Ok so now that you have bought the perfect ripe avocado, you’ll want to eat it! The usual and most common way is to eat it raw as it doesn’t withstand the baking process. If you want to add it to a cooked meal, only put it at the end and avoid to boil it as it will lose its delicious taste. There are many ways to consume avocados:

Fresh, cut in half. You can spice it up a bit by adding salt, pepper or even some mayonaise

Add it to sandwiches, tortillas or salads

More unusual way is to put some in deserts such as ice creams, fruit salads or mousses

Prepare a guacamole, which is a famous avocado mash with hot peppers, onions and lemon juice

If you need some more inspiration on how to add avocados to your meals, check out the recipes below! Tag us on Instagram if you make some so we can see your creativity 🙂

4 Simple, Easy and Healthy Avocado Recipes You’ll Want to Try

Classic Deliciously Creamy Guacamole

Believe us, this guacomole is by far the best you'll ever try! It's low in sugar and high in antioxidant. Perfect for all your summer parties 🙂

Prep Time10 mins

Ingredients

½a small red onion

1fresh red chillies

3ripe avocados

1bunch of fresh coriander

6ripe cherry tomatoes

2limes

Ingredients

Ingredients

½a small red onion

1fresh red chillies

3ripe avocados

1bunch of fresh coriander

6ripe cherry tomatoes

2limes

Directions

1

Believe us, this guacomole is by far the best you'll ever try! It's low in sugar and high in antioxidant. Perfect for all your summer parties 🙂

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